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Netherlands prepares for first king in 120 years

By Henry Chu Los Angeles Times

Posted:
04/29/2013 12:01:00 AM MDT

Portraits of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands hang on the facade of the DeLaMar Theater in Amsterdam. On Tuesday, Queen Beatrix, 75, will voluntarily step down in favor of her 46-year-old son, who will be sworn in as the first king of the Netherlands since 1890. (Michel Porro, Getty Images)

AMSTERDAM — Even by the unconventional standards of the Dutch, their new king is going to be a bit of a novelty.

He has a license to fly commercial airliners. He's married to a South American-born wife, a lively Argentine who is more popular than he is. He says he won't mind it if people fail to address him as "Your Majesty" since he's no "protocol fetishist" — an amusing description here in a city that caters to nearly every fetish imaginable.

But his biggest break with Dutch history of the past 120 years is the simple fact that he's a he. Queens have reigned over the Netherlands since 1890, a matriarchy that will come to an end Tuesday when Crown Prince Willem-Alexander is sworn in as monarch.

His soon-to-be subjects are taking the shift in stride, though no one alive today can recall a time when people spoke of their koning (king) rather than their koningin (queen).

"It's strange," 68-year-old Ineke Flier says, rolling the word around in her mouth. "But he's nice. ... He can do a lot of good things for Holland."

Chief among his duties will be to represent the Netherlands as its head of state, its standard-bearer around the world. At home, he's supposed to be the uniter in chief, a symbol of Dutch identity, cohesion and continuity.

But some wonder whether things will feel different when the nation's public face is one that has whiskers. The last king was Willem-Alexander's great-great-grandfather, Willem III. First-born daughters of the House of Orange-Nassau have succeeded him since.

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(In the Netherlands, the monarch's eldest child is heir to the throne regardless of gender, unlike in Britain, where a son takes precedence over older sisters. The British Parliament is currently amending that rule.)

"Having a female head of state has been so much the style that (there's) a kind of feeling it's going to be harder for a male to fit the mold," says James Kennedy, a historian at the University of Amsterdam. "Some people say that the Dutch monarchy has taken on ... a caring, nurturing style — the maternal thing. How is Willem-Alexander going to be able to do that?"

The prince, who turned 46 on Saturday, will also be the youngest sovereign in Europe. But that doesn't faze his compatriots, who are confident that his feckless days as "Prince Pils," the nickname he earned as a beer-swilling college student, are well behind him.

"He's serious enough to be king," says Flier, a retired designer. "The world is changing. In America, it's a young president."

Willem-Alexander's succession is possible only because of a tradition that would horrify the British royals. Beatrix, the prince's 75-year-old mother, is voluntarily stepping down as queen, as did her mother before her, in 1980, and her grandmother, in 1948.

Those abdications, almost in the manner of CEOs opting for a comfortable retirement, illustrate just how different the Dutch royal family is from the House of Windsor.

Tuesday's investiture of Willem-Alexander, the oldest of three brothers, isn't even a "coronation." Dutch kings and queens are sworn in, not crowned, during a special joint session of the two chambers of parliament, which form the Netherlands' democratically elected government. The prime minister remains the country's political leader.

"It's often been said that this is a republic ruled over by a monarch," Kennedy says. "There is this kind of notion that the queen or the king really does need to know this was once a republic and that monarchs are kind of guests in the Netherlands. They serve at the pleasure of the people."